Note: Dentists, doctors, business owners etc have hired business and practice management consultants to help increase new patients and customers, to be more well-organized and to have improved customer service. However, there is one area of management which most often never get adequate attention:

When I worked as a waiter in Austria, my native country, I worked hard (90 hours a week, for about nine months in a row). An American tourist told me that I was working too hard to ever make money. I replied that I love my job and that I made good money. He smiled, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “I’m happy for you. But I mean real money, lots of money – you can’t make it while working so hard.” 25 years later, I understood what he meant.

Here is a little break-down on an organizational structure:

Goal-Maker – Every organization needs a Goal-Maker (or Dream-Maker) like Kennedy, Gandhi, etc., setting goals such as ‘let’s fly to the moon’ or ‘let’s free the country from those terrible suppressive occupants!’ The Goal-Maker usually does not perform the physical step of an organization. He just ‘dreams stuff up’ so to say! Which does not mean that he is not usually pretty good at performing the two levels below him. It is just that he better devote his time to dream stuff up and create new games for the rest to play. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.

Manager – This is the executive who should be putting a team together, making strategic plans. He should not perform the physical work; otherwise he has no time to direct and get the work done, which is his job. Every manager is of course some kind of a goal maker as well. In fact all managers have to be a bit of a goal maker for the areas for which they are responsible.

They need to dream up or set goals so that the division they are handling knows where to go.

But all the goal setting follows the big picture, which was dreamed up by the Big Boss.

The manager puts in place all the mechanics needed to achieve the dream. The manager should not be pulled down to the level of actually doing the work needed such as, seeing patients, phone calls, selling, administrative paperwork etc.

He is there to make sure the horses are constantly in front of the wagon well-aligned and that they are pulling in the right direction. He is not here to do the job, not even handling costumer’s complains is his job (which again does not mean that he probably and ideally is one of the best in all those functions). It is just not his job as a manager if you, the goal-maker and dreamer, wants a growing and profitable company, that is.

Workers–They are the people who actually do the work. Doing dentistry, typing, engineering, architecture, farming, drilling oil etc. all falls under the category of workers.

Maybe you can’t exactly dump all work overnight. Chances are that currently you are the dreamer and the manager and the worker. This probably results in many of your ideas, which look terrific in the evening, and not so doable in the morning when you get hit with management questions on the spot while being in the middle of a job which should be reserved for a worker.

Did that ever happen to you?

But for the business owner, who is usually also the goal-maker, you must work the hardest on becoming that goal-maker only.

Make plans towards becoming a goal-maker, force yourself to have the time set aside to manage them so that in the end all you do is set the goals which will get planned by the management team and done by the employees.

Think how far you could get!!

First, you need to make time to be a manager and then a goal-maker only – just do it!

Managing and goal-making happens to be better paid than doing heart surgery or any other “work”!!

That is because goal-makers and managers can ‘duplicate’ themselves. They can have ‘extensions’ of themselves (other workers) performing the legwork associated with their plans, according to their wishes.

A heart surgeon or any worker cannot duplicate himself – he is the only one that has to be there to do that legwork — and thus he will always make money only when he works, and will hardly ever have time to venture into other businesses or hobbies.

Setting your practice up so that you can become a ‘hands-free’ owner is the only way to make lots of money without working more hours.

The most neglected job of all small business owners is the job of a ‘goal-maker’.

Helmut Flasch

CEO

Doctor Relations

P.S: If you wish to work towards being a hands-free owner, contact us to work out a strategy just for you.